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Published: September 29, 2008

The End

Exiting the Madhouse

Notes from a Cultural Madhouse

By Christopher Zehnder

Endings have a certain poignancy. When even the ending of what is unpleasant can leave one with a sense of loss, what is the sense of dislocation that attends the severing of what has proved to be a consuming task, stretched over many years?

In September 1994 I began writing for the Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission, a monthly newspaper that covered events and issues of interest to Catholics living in Southern California. Six months later, I became editor of the Mission, and in June 2002, I took on the editorship of the Mission’s sister paper, the San Francisco Faith. Both newspapers ceased publication in late 2006 and were merged into this web site, California Catholic Daily. I have continued on the web site as a news writer and Blogmeister for “Notes from A Cultural Madhouse.” Now, after 14 years, I am ending my life of reporting and commenting on the Catholic Church in California. This is my last “Madhouse.”

I don’t leave with a sense of a task uncompleted, though, at times, I have asked myself what that task was. The purpose of a newspaper is always a bit murky – does it exist to titillate or to inform? What exactly is the point of reporting on what often proves to be the underside of life? Why spend so much time, money, and energy in mere reportage when one can be engaged in the more positive task of teaching, of uncovering the good, and encouraging virtue? These are important questions, since no Christian should encourage prurience. Even when reporting on the seamy sides of life or on scandals in the Church, the Christian newspaperman must have the good of souls in mind.

I would never claim that, as an editor and writer, I have not made errors in judgment or have not allowed zeal to draw me into imprudence or a lack of charity. I regret some of the things I have written or allowed into print. Yet, I think, on the whole, what I and the writers I’ve worked with on the newspapers tried to do was essentially right. Our task was twofold – to alert Catholics to dangers, both theological and moral, in the Church and the larger society, and to publish, in the context of current events, the perennial teachings of the Church.

I don’t know how much good, if any, we have effected. I perceive what seems to be a change of tide in the Church. In 1994, the forces in support of heterodoxy and opposed to tradition seemed in the ascendant in California and in the universal Church. Today, they are in slow withdrawal. Not all is perfect – far from it. The purity of the Church’s Faith and life still hang in the balance. Yet, I sense a fatal weakening of “progressivism” in the Church universal and perceive the dawn of a renewed commitment to the integrity of her traditions. I don’t think periodicals like the Mission and Faith have been a decisive influence in this renewal; but if we have helped some to understand the Faith better, I am content.

One task I set myself from the beginning of my editorship was to point readers to the fullness of the Catholic faith. We have had at times to concentrate on certain issues – such as homosexuality – and I have regretted this, though I think it was necessary to do so. Yet, such issues I never have thought the central ones, though they impinged on our consciousness to such an extent that they could not be ignored. The writers who wrote for the newspapers and I have often, I think, felt like the Israelites who wanted to rebuild Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. We wanted to help construct the walls and restore the temple, but had to fight off the assaults of the Samaritans.

We tried, however, like the ancient Israelites to build with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other. A sword, however, of defense, not assault. Whether we built well, or defended well, I cannot say. I speak only of our intent.

Part of this task of rebuilding, as far as I am concerned, was not merely to report, but to relay what the Church in her rich traditions has said on a number of topics. It has seemed to me that Church suffers today not only on account of those who would relativize her teachings and destroy her traditions but because many orthodox Catholics have not fully grasped the fullness and richness of those teachings and traditions. These teachings and traditions can be compared to a vessel, fragile, but of a beautiful and intricate design, that has been shattered. We each run away with a fractured part of that vessel, thinking it the whole. The task, therefore, is to realize that we grasp on only to parts of a greater unity, and realizing this, seek to reconstruct what has been broken.

That vessel of doctrine and tradition, of course, can be found in all its wholeness in the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church. It can never really be broken, for the Holy Spirit Himself guarantees its integrity. Yet it can be shattered insofar as our perception and adhesion to Catholic fullness is concerned. Refracted through the prism of false nationalism, of an incorrect anthropology, and of customs and modes of thought that diverge from the Faith, the light of Christ is broken up and sullied. It ceases to be the light that enlightens the world.

The answer to this state of things, of course, is conversion -- conversion to the fullness of the Faith. This requires an assiduous pursuit of Catholic truth on the part of Catholics, both of the “left” and the “right.” It requires an abandonment of such horizontal distinctions of “left” and “right” in favor of the transcendent. We must be neither conservatives nor liberals, but Catholics.

Such a conversion requires kicking aside the scandala that impede us in our pursuit of the fullness of Christ. It requires docility to the magisterium of the Church, even when it opposes dearly held assumptions. And we all cling to these assumptions, whether in dogma, moral issues having to do with life and sexuality, liturgy, the political order, economics, or in a host of other areas. Ite et separamini, “go, and be you separate,” was the call of Jesus – by which He did not mean a retreat to the ghetto but a re-evaluation and restoration of all things in Him.

Indeed, we are to be separate, but engaged. Separation from the world and union with Christ is not merely a personal good but a charism directing us to the world that suffers and dies without Him. Catholics, whether cloistered or living in the world, only achieve their salvation through the twofold love – of God and neighbor. As someone once put it, when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, the first question He will ask of us is, “Where are the others?”

An emphasis on mission to those “outside” does not conflict with personal perfection, for perfection is only completed in charity. We become holy by working to help others become holy. We cannot love Christ without loving those in whom He reveals himself to us – the poor in soul and body, afflicted by oppression and sin, suffering in body and soul. In the Incarnation, God has united Himself to all men. Even the greatest of sinners (each of us, really) is united, at least potentially, with Christ. Every one of us is the least of His brethren.

All tasks a Christian undertakes – whether it be newspaper editing, teaching, the corporal deeds of mercy, being a mother or a father, farming, running a store, engaging in business, or anything else – are meant to be conduits of grace. In whatever we do, we are to make Christ apparent so that others may be drawn to Him. But to make Christ apparent, we must become like Christ, and that is only achieved by a full adhesion and dedication to the fullness of His teaching, which may be found in the traditions and magisterium of the Catholic Church.

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